I didn't have AJ Jenkins in my Top 100. If he has a better NFL career than Coby Fleener I invite Trent Baalke to criticize me in the most embarrassing of fashion. But to my eye, this pick was error.My season picks will be ready when timely. My college top 25 is already up.

One, being a super Christian. Whenever there was a "the evangelical movement is sweeping clubhouses" piece for about five years, Chad Curtis was front and center.He got the edit that Christian athletes get when they perform well - their success is due to their high character and evidence of the power of prayer.

And when they fail - well, then it isn't evidence of anything. Just an individual's failure. See how that works?

(Maybe a tag title match with the Shield defending against
Mark Henry/Big Show)

Pre-Show: US Title: Dean Ambrose v. Rob Van Dam

I had a conversation with a woman this week about Bradley
Manning, Edward Snowden and the general merits of the current version of the
security state. There was a point at
which my view was dismissed, in sort of a kidding on the square fashion, as
mansplaining.

I don’t know where to put that.

I stood in front of groups of students almost every day for
more than a decade and tried as best I could to not overly utilize the inherent
power of position to “win” discussions; I was the guy with the letters behind
my name and when I felt myself relying on the student/teacher dynamic to put my
thumb on the scale I looked to correct, if not overly so.

(To any of my thousands of former students who felt their
voices insufficiently appreciated, my apologies – truth is, most of the time I
just needed to get to chapter 8 by the end of the hour.)

I’m a man (and a white one at that) and there is a privilege
that goes along with that position (one could litigate the extent of that as
opposed to the privilege given based on wealth, but even when I had nine bucks
in the bank no one could have gotten away with shooting me in the chest just
because I was wearing a sweatshirt and carrying a bag of candy) even if I don’t
feel it in my daily life.

My aim is true, as is yours, I assume. I enjoy sandwiches. I think almost everyone works too hard. I dig
professional graps and not using my institutionalized advantages any more than,
you know, I need to in order to keep winning arguments about the 4th
Amendment and government overreach.

So let’s mansplain some SummerSlam 2013.

WWE Title: John Cena v. Daniel Bryan

In the world created by WWE, John Cena is inarguably the
greatest wrestler alive; he has dominated the sport for the better part of a
decade, wrestling in 6 main events at Wrestlemania. Hulk Hogan wrestled in 7, for
comparison. He is a legend, an athlete
of historic significance. In this world,
Daniel Bryan is the ultimate underdog.
Small, hairy, with years in the minor leagues and coming off having
spent months believing himself to be the weak link in a tag team with
Kane.

In the broader wrestling world, one in which WWE, while the
most profitable promotion is almost never the one with the best matches, Bryan
Danielson is arguably the best wrestler alive. The Wrestling Observer
Newsletter has the most globally recognized year end awards list, looking to
evaluate every promotion across the world. The Most Outstanding Wrestler Award
is given just for in-ring ability, without reflection of the box office
significance of the matches. Bryan
Danielson has won 5 times. For
comparison, Kenta Kobashi, who might win a vote of worldwide wrestling fans as
the greatest wrestler of all time, won twice.
John Cena has not won, and, to my eye, is not one of the 250 best
wrestlers in the world.

That’s what this match is.
It’s not the storyline explanation of Cena gifting a title shot to
Bryan, not the real world explanation of the two boyfriends of the Bella Twins
(what, you’re not watching Total Divas?
Then you missed the one Funkadactyl shooting on the one Uso. It was like Brody/Luger) it’s a collision of
two entirely different universes, it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer chasing Walter
White.

It should be really good; Cena has the ability to have good
matches, even great matches, when he’s in the ring with a high level worker –
and if you give Bryan Danielson 22 uninterrupted minutes with almost anyone
with two functional feet, his track record of producing really terrific matches
is almost without peer.

The inclusion of Triple H as guest referee places this match
within the broader McMahons Explode storyline that looks to be headed for
Wrestlemania. When Danielson played the “I’m a wrestler and you’re not” card,
that was probably a tip that they’re turning him heel. Were he, with Hunter’s aid, to go over Cena
here (and then shave, becoming the next incarnation of the corporate champion)
that wouldn’t surprise. It should be on
a very short list of the best WWE matches of the year.

(It was really good, 4 1/4, They played it straight, turning Orton and giving him the title after the Bryan win.)

CM Punk v. Brock Lesnar

And this match should be right next to it.

This is a storyline match; a solid professional wrestling
story, solidly delivered. Paul Heyman,
for my money the best non-wrestler in wrestling during my now more than 30
years of watching, is a manipulative manager.

One of his clients, CM Punk, wanted to split with him amicably – and
that caused Heyman to have him whacked, or the wrestling equivalent thereof, by
another of his clients, Lesnar.

And that’s it – Punk’s the bridge between Cena and Bryan,
with both high match quality credentials from his years on the independent
wrestling circuit and a pretty solidly embedded position as a WWE superstar.
Lesnar’s return to WWE has been, from a business standpoint, a largely missed
opportunity – a lesson taught pretty definitively from the “invasion” angle
after both WCW and ECW were folded into the promotion now more than ten years ago
is that WWE has no patience with outsider gimmicks. Brock Lesnar entered the
WWE as a legitimate MMA Champion but pretty quickly became (through a loss to
Cena, of course) just another guy. His
performance, however, particularly in the ring, has been better than one could
have hoped given his layoff and mercurial personality. It’s hard to have a good feeling about the
finish, as you don’t know when it is Lesnar will return, but a Lesnar win,
perhaps with interference from Heyman’s other client, the Intercontinental
Champion Curtis Axel (Curt Hennig’s son Joe) makes sense. Hopefully that finish won’t be overly
tainted, as this, again, profiles as a really good match.

(This was also 4 1/4 and the new WWE MOTY, just Heyman and no Axel for the interference leading to the predicted finish.)

World Championship: Alberto del Rio v. Christian

Injuries and an ill-timed jump to rival promotion TNA
derailed any possibility Christian may have had to reach the main event status
of his now retired longtime partner Edge; but his work, nearly regardless of
circumstance, remains rock solid. He’s
picked up recent pinfalls against Randy Orton and Del Rio to get this shot at
the secondary title belt. WWE pulled the
plug on the “Alberto Del Rio – Hero to Hispanic Youth” experiment in the quest
to find a post-Rey Mysterio mover of merchandise and he is once again an
entitled heel, although now without a valet – he gave Ricardo the boot in a
recent angle. This is likely the match
that winds up being too short to be much more than a good television match, but
for a short, WWE style match, there aren’t too many guys who deliver more consistently
than Christian (he loses, I’d guess).

(Good, 3 1/2 stars and exactly the kind of solid match predicted with the predicted finish)

Cody Rhodes v. Damien Sandow

This was a weird breakup – WWE writers, with such a high
content burden, are generally loathe to move away from easy comedy, there
looked to be another 3 months of sketches left from this team which was pulled
from television rotation long before the official breakup at the Money in the
Bank PPV (Sandow won the secondary MITB briefcase in what, to date, is the best
WWE match of 2013, by taking out Rhodes).
Cody is now a mustachioed babyface, which, if it sounds like an unlikely
contradiction, is.

I prefer Cody’s babyface matches; I hope they’re able to
stick with this run – it should be a solid match as long as it goes and I’ll
assume the heel goes over.

I’m worried about Bray Wyatt. It’s a cool gimmick; I enjoy the vignettes and
the intro music and the lantern and the whole thing. And he’s a good worker. I’m not sure how well
it’s going to translate to the arenas, once the lights come on and now it’s
Brodie Lee and the other guy in the ring, the veneer seems to come off quickly.
Had they slid the Briscoes (now I’m just talking to indie wrestling fans, my
apologies for being excessively exclusionary) into the group I’d be a little
more optimistic.

It might work; I’m pulling for it – I think a match that had
a better chance to be good would have made for a better PPV introduction, but
this is clearly a Wyatt win.

The quality of women’s matches in WWE borders on abysmal; I
assume Ziggler, badly needing some refurbishing, goes over here and the heels
win the all divas match.

If, in fact, the tag title match is added I’d assume The
Shield keeps.

Ambrose keeps over RVD in the pre-show.

Ambrose lost, but kept; Ziggler got his win, and the divas match went the other way.

The top two matches make this an absolutely must watch; in
event history there have only been two SummersSlam with two 4 star matches
(2000, 2011) there is a solid opportunity for this show to match those. I’ve seen every SummerSlam since its 1988
origin, the top two matches make this year’s the one to which I’ve most looked
forward.

They paid off.

Just as I did with the Wrestlemania
PPV, here is every match in Summer Slam history ranked. The match times are approximate and they are
followed by my star ratings for all of the 3 stars and up matches.